My Italian Bulldozer: A Novel

Scotland fell away beneath him, a stretch of green pasture, of hills, of swirling mist. Suddenly they were bathed in sunlight; fields of cloud, topped with crenulations of white, now lay beneath them as their plane pointed towards south. In his window seat he closed his eyes against the glare, imagining for a few moments their destination, as much an idea, a feeling, as a place. He saw a small tower that he had never seen before, a tower of warm red brick with a pattern of holes for doves. Down below, a man was pulling at a bell rope; as the bell rang the doves launched themselves from their holes in the brick and fluttered skywards.

He opened his eyes, and noticed that the passenger in the seat beside him, a man in perhaps his early fifties, dressed in a lightweight linen suit, was looking at him. The man smiled at him, and he returned the smile.

“What takes you to Pisa?” the man asked. His accent revealed him as Italian.

Paul hesitated, unsure as to whether he wanted to strike up a conversation that went beyond the niceties. He had brought with him a book that was just beginning to engage him and he was looking forward to getting back to it. But the man smiled at him again, and his natural politeness decided the matter.

“So parlare Italiano,” he began. “Sono … ”

The man did not allow him to finish. “Ah!” he said, and then, continuing in Italian. “What a pleasure it is for us Italians to discover somebody who speaks our language.”

“I’m sure there are many. Such a beautiful language … ”

“Yes, but what use is a beautiful language spoken just by oneself? It’s all very well for the Spaniards, because there are so many Spanish speakers—all over the world. Even Portuguese has Brazil, but we have just us—just Italy—and after a while we get fed up with speaking only to ourselves. We have heard everything there is to say in Italian.”

“Surely not … ”“I am not entirely serious. A bit serious, perhaps, but not entirely.” Turning in his seat, he extended a hand towards Paul. “But I must introduce myself. I am Palumbieri—Silvio Palumbieri.”

“I’m Paul Stuart.”

Silvio loosened his tie. “Stuart is the name of Scottish kings, is it not? Mary Stuart … ” He made a chopping gesture across his throat. “She was most unfortunate. Queens cannot choose their neighbours, and if they find they have one who has an axe, then it is most regrettable.” He sighed, as if the execution of Mary Queen of Scots had been a recent outrage.

“It was a long time ago,” Paul said.

Silvio raised an eyebrow. “But I am an historian,” he said. “What happened in the past remains rather vivid for me and … ” He paused, and now removed the tie altogether. “That’s better. Yes I find that the past has a much bigger shadow than people believe. It’s still with us in so many ways. At our side all the time, whispering into our ear.”

“Warning us not to repeat our mistakes?”

Silvio smiled. “We repeat some. Others we’re sensible enough to avoid making more than once. But that’s not what I was thinking about. What I was thinking about was the way in which the past determines our character, not just as individuals, but as nations. A child who is treated badly grows up damaged. A people who are subjected to bad treatment will be suspicious. They will be bad allies.”

Paul, who had been holding his book, slipped it into the seat pocket in front of him. He had endured worse conversations on flights, including an attempt at religious conversion, a confession of adultery, and detailed advice on the attractions of Panama as a tax shelter. “You’re thinking of?”

Silvio waved a hand airily. “Oh, there are many examples. Russia, for one. Russia is a peasant country. It has a past of serfdom that ended only in the nineteenth century. That made for a vast, stubborn, ignorant population—one that was also very resentful. And they are resentful today—particularly of the west.”

“I see.”

“They view the west in the same light as they viewed their feudal masters. Authority.” He paused. “So western politicians who lecture Russia about human rights or their tendency to invade their neighbours will never change them. Not one bit. You’re dealing with a particular sort of bear, you see. One with a history. An abused bear with a short temper.”

Paul savoured the metaphor. He was right. “And Italy?”

“Well, that’s an interesting case. With us, the important thing to remember is that we are very young. We have lots of history, of course, but Italy itself is a teenager. The Risorgimento was really just yesterday, you’ll know. It ended in 1871. That’s yesterday. And that means that as a state, we are still very far from maturity. That’s why half the population doesn’t really believe that the Italian state exists—or, if it does, feel that they owe it nothing. We’re very disloyal to Rome, you know. We look after ourselves—our family, our city—and we don’t like paying taxes to Rome.”

“Nobody likes taxes.”

“Some like them less than others. Take the Greeks. They have a particular aversion to taxes, and this is because they haven’t forgotten that they were once part of the Ottoman Empire and they saw no reason to pay taxes to the Ottomans.”

“So you’re saying that people don’t change?”

Silvio sighed. “They don’t. Or if they do, it takes a long time. A very long time.”

The plane gave a slight jolt as it encountered a pocket of turbulent air. Paul glanced out of the window, and then returned to the conversation. “May I ask you something?” he said. “Is this what you actually do?”

Silvio shook his head. “I’m an economic historian,” he replied. “That’s something quite different, but it doesn’t stop me having views on these more general matters.”

Paul had not intended to be rude. “Forgive me. I was enjoying our conversation.”

“But you must read your book, and I have some papers to attend to.” Silvio reached into his pocket. “Let me give you my card. I’m at the University of Pisa. It has all the details there. If you need help while you’re in Italy, please get in touch with me. My door is always open.”

Paul thanked him and took the card. Professor Silvio Palumbieri, it appeared, was not only Professor of Economic History at the University of Pisa, but a member of the Italian Academy of Economic Science and a cavaliere of the Republic. He slipped the card into the pocket of his jacket and opened his book.

They arrived in Pisa shortly before eleven in the morning. Paul said goodbye to Silvio in the plane, and once again as they were waiting for their luggage at the baggage carousel.

“Don’t forget,” said Silvio. “You have my card. I am at your disposal while you’re in my country.”

Paul thanked him. The first of his two suitcases had now been disgorged and he struggled to retrieve it. A few minutes later the second case appeared, and in that mood of relief and gratitude that always follows a safe reunion with luggage, he began to make his way to the a of the car hire firm with which Gloria had made the reservation of a small saloon car.

And that was the point at which the journey, so smooth until then, began to go badly wrong.

“Your name?” said the reservation clerk.

Paul handed him the booking confirmation Gloria had printed out for him. “It’s all there,” he said.The clerk took the piece of paper. There was an air of suspicion in the way in which he held it—as if this might be a forgery of some sort. He looked down at his computer and typed in a few digits. Then he scrutinised the form again, glanced at Paul, and then looked back at his screen.

“I am afraid there is no such reservation,” he said.

Paul leant forward, trying to get a glimpse of the computer screen. The clerk shifted it slightly, to ensure that it was even less visible.

“I’m sorry, dottore, but there is nothing. This reservation has been made by one of our overseas offices, and they have not confirmed it with us. This has happened before. It is not our fault.”

Paul felt the back of his neck becoming warm. “But it says very clearly … ”

The clerk cut him short. “There is nothing here on my screen.” He gave Paul a look of reproach. “Nothing. There is no car.”

“But that print-out … ” Paul pointed at his pieced of paper, now seemingly so much more valuable than before.

“That piece of paper has the name of your firm at the top and below that it has the words Reservation Confirmed. Look. Right here. Reservation confirmed.”

The clerk shook his head. “That document is no longer valid.”

“What do you mean by that?” challenged Paul. He was being polite, but was unable to prevent a testy note from creeping into his voice.

“I mean that if a document of that type is not confirmed by an entry in the main computer, then it ceases to have any validity. That is the way these things are.” It was the voice of the patient bureaucrat, explaining how, by immutable custom, the working world ordered its affairs. But even the strictest system has room for humanity. “However, we have a spare car. It is our very last car in hand; it is a very busy time of year, you’ll understand. We can allocate that to you instead of this non-existent car you have been promised.”

“For the same rate?” asked Paul.

The clerk looked at him lugubriously, as if disappointed that Paul could even suspect that they would even consider a higher rate. “At exactly the same rate,” he confirmed. “It is much bigger than the car you claim to have booked … ”

“That I did book,” corrected Paul.

“It is bigger than that car,” repeated the clerk. “It is a Mercedes Benz. I can prepare the documents for you.”Paul relaxed. He was not yet in Montalcino, but the prospect of arriving there before dinner was beginning to seem more real. “You’re very kind,” he said to the clerk.

The clerk bowed his head. Tapping out details on his keyboard, he printed two sheets of paper for Paul to sign before reaching for a set of keys.

“You’ll find the car outside,” he said, and told him the row in the car park where it would be parked. “Show your copy to the woman at the barrier, and she will let you through.”

It was now midday, and the sun was at its zenith. When he left the cool of the car rental office, with its sharp, air-conditioned air, Paul felt it press down on him like a warm hand; it was humid, and his shirt clung to him uncomfortably, the damp patches showing dark through the fabric. He wiped his brow. It would be cooler in Montalcino, several hundred feet higher than Pisa.

He looked about him. The form gave the colour of the car and the number, and he started to make his way slowly along the lines of vehicles in the relevant row. By the time he reached the end, he had failed to find it. He looked along the line of vehicles in the neighbouring row; perhaps they had made a mistake and parked it in the wrong place. Slowly he worked his way along that row too, checking the number of each Mercedes Benz. It was not there—nor was it in the row beyond that. That left only one possible line of cars, and he now checked this carefully, with the same lack of result.

He felt hot and frustrated. He had heard that car hire in Italy could be an arcane, rather trying process, but he had hoped that Gloria’s arrangements would somehow avoid any difficulties. Obviously not, he said to himself.The relatively short time he had spent in the sun was enough to make him thirsty. Looking around, he saw on the far side of the car park, separated from it by only a modest fence, a small café. He would find himself something to drink there—something cool and refreshing—before going back to the car rental office. There must be other car parks, he decided; perhaps an employee had put it in the wrong car park altogether; airports were complicated places, with all their roads and buildings, and that sort of mistake could be made only too easily.

He sat in the café for fifteen minutes or so, enjoying the air-conditioning and the bottle of chilled mineral water he had ordered. Then he returned to the terminal building, where the office of Personal-Drive Italia was located. The clerk for some reason pretended not to recognize him, and solemnly noted down his details afresh.

“So you say the car isn’t there,” he said once Paul had finished with his story.

“That’s so,” said Paul. “I have looked very carefully and it isn’t there.”

The clerk stared at him. “Yet you signed for it.”

Paul frowned. “I signed the rental agreement.”

The clerk shook his head. “No, you signed for the car itself. Look … ” He took the form from Paul. “Here—you see—here and here. That says, I have received the above-mentioned car in good condition. That is your signature, I take it.”

“Of course it is. You were here when I signed it. You gave it to me. You.”

The clerk looked away. “Under this agreement,” he intoned, “you are liable for the car once it comes into your possession.”

“But it never did!” exploded Paul. “I never found the car. I’ve just tried to tell you that.”

“That is not what the document says,” retorted the clerk.

For a few moments Paul was speechless. Then he spoke coldly and decisively. “I must speak to the manager,” he said. “Please call him.”

The clerk’s eyes narrowed. “The manager is away.”

“Where?”

“He is at the funeral of his mother. In Ravenna.”

Paul tried to decide whether this was a lie. It was difficult to tell.

“In that case I want to see the assistant manager,” he said.

The clerk replied quickly. “I am the assistant manager.”

Paul looked up at the ceiling. “I suggest we shall forget the whole business, then.”

The clerk shrugged. “When are you going to bring the car back? I can’t cancel the contract until the car has been returned.”

Paul gasped. “I have never seen this car,” he said, chiselling out each word for emphasis. “How can I return something I’ve never had?”

“Then you will be liable for the whole cost of the car.”

Paul closed his eyes. “I’m going to call the police,” he said.

The clerk shrugged again. “There is a policeman standing over there,” he said. “You see him? You can call him if you like.”

Paul strode across the arrivals hall and approached the policeman. The officer was talking to a woman running a small luggage stall, but he broke away when Paul addressed him.

“I am having a bit of trouble over there,” said Paul, nodding in the direction of the car rental desk. “I am being falsely accused of taking a car that I have never so much as seen. I believe this is an attempt at extorting money from me.”

Paul felt relieved that here was somebody who might penetrate the fog of obfuscation into which it seemed he had wandered. But once at the desk, his relief proved to be short-lived.

“This gentleman,” said the clerk, rising to greet the policeman, “has disposed of one of our vehicles. He refuses to return it, and I have simply informed him of the consequences.”

The policeman frowned, and turned to face Paul. “This is a very serious matter,” he said. “Where is this car?”

Paul drew in his breath. “There is no car,” he said. “I have never touched it.”

This was the signal for the clerk to pass a copy of the rental document to the policeman. “Here is the proof that he took it,” he said. “You’ll see his signature down at the bottom there. That establishes that he took possession of the car—the same car that he now refuses to hand back.”

The policeman studied the piece of paper. “Is this your signature, sir? Is your name … ” He stumbled over the pronunciation. “Paul Stuart?”

“That’s me,” said Paul. “And that’s my signature too.”

“In that case,” said the policeman, “you must accompany me to the police station.”

“Oh, this is absurd,” said Paul, his voice rising markedly.

The policeman reached out to touch him on the arm. “You must control yourself, sir. It doesn’t help to shout.”

“But I have never even seen this car,” Paul protested. “I have had nothing to do with it. Nothing.”

The policeman looked at him guardedly. “But you have signed this document.”

“I signed it before I went to look for the car,” said Paul.

“But that’s not what it says here,” said the policeman.

Paul glared at the clerk, who simply stared at his screen, as if waiting for a troublesome client to go away so as to allow him to get back to his work. He looked at his watch. If he had to go to the police station he would do it, so that he could get on with the task of finding another car. And at the police station, he imagined that he might find somebody who would be able to take a more intelligent view of the situation than this junior officer.

“I’m ready to accompany you to the police station,” Paul said. “Although I shall have to come in your car, as I don’t have one myself.”

The policeman smiled. “You mustn’t make light of these things,” he said in a not unfriendly tone. “Car theft is a serious charge, you know.”

Paul opened his mouth to say something, but found that he had no words. His Italian, his English, his French all seemed to have deserted him. Kafka, he thought, and then, more appropriately he felt, Lewis Carroll.

Imagine going to school on a boat! The rip-roaring excitement continues in the second volume of this adventure-mystery series set on the high seas. Ben and Fee MacTavish and their schoolmates on board the School Ship Tobermory are headed thousands of miles from their base in Mull to a small island in the Caribbean. They will […]

The eleventh book in the 44 Scotland Street series Our beloved cast of characters are back, as are the joys and trials of life at 44 Scotland Street. Bertie’s mother, Irene, returns from the Middle East to discover that, in her absence, her son has been exposed to the worst of evils—television shows, ice cream parlors, […]

Jamie thought for a moment. They were sitting in their kitchen, on one of those indecisive days that was summer, but not quite yet; a day when the heating might as well be off as on, but when prudence—and superstition—required it still to be kept going. If you lived in Scotland and you turned off your heating too early, then the weather gods—stern, Nordic and unforgiving—could send a body of cold air down from the Arc­tic and remind you that they, not you, were in control.

Jamie at least had taken off his sweater—as an act of faith, thought Isabel—while she had kept hers on. One of the news­papers, glimpsed in the local newsagent’s shop, had featured the headline Weathermen say summer will be scorching! but Isabel remembered that this particular newspaper said much the same thing every year, out of concern for its readers, she decided, who otherwise were deprived of good news, and who were desperate for any meteorological crumb of comfort.

“Yes, I remember it,” said Jamie, looking at her from over the table. “Although I’ve never been there, of course. It all depends on what one means by remember.” He paused. “Not that I want to sound too much like you, Isabel.”

She smiled; the allusion had not been lost on her. They were playing Free Association, a game they sometimes resorted to when conversation failed, when there was no newspaper or magazine to browse, or when there was simply nothing else to think about. Each would come up with a name of a person or a place, and then the other would describe the thoughts that the word triggered. They had not invented it, of course: Isabel was careful to credit Freud for that, even if there were plenty of other practitioners, including Proust, who, she felt, only had to glance at something before he would be off into several pages of triggered memories.

Her reference was to the railway station at which Edward Thomas’s train had stopped one day in 1914. Adlestrop—seeing the name on the platform sign had prompted the famous poem: the steam hissed; somebody cleared his throat; no one came or left on the bare platform. Yes. I remember Adlestrop was the first line, and this had been what triggered Jamie’s response. She was proud of him: few people bothered to remember poetry any more, but Jamie did and could reel off screeds of it. “It some­how sticks in my mind,” he once said. “I just remember it. All sorts of poetry.”

“Things you learned at school?”

He nodded. “Especially those. We were encouraged to commit poems to memory. Shakespeare’s sonnets, Wordsworth, Byron. The lot. Remember Hiawatha? Longfellow’s still there.” He smiled at her. “Or some of it. On the shores of Gitche Gumee, / Of the shining Big-Sea-Water, / Stood . . .”

“Nokomis,” supplied Isabel. “My mother loved that poem and read it all to me—all how many stanzas? It goes on forever, doesn’t it? Still, Nokomis . . . Now then . . . Stood Nokomis, the old woman, / Pointing with her finger westward . . .” She paused as the words, with their insistent, repetitive rhythm, came back to her. She had not thought about Nokomis for a long time. Then she continued, “Nokomis sent him off to avenge her father, didn’t she?”

“She did,” said Jamie. “It was somewhat vindictive of her, don’t you feel?”

“Oh, I think you’re being a bit unfair. Nokomis was right to encourage him to deal with Megissogwon who was, after all, Tall of stature, broad of shoulder, / Dark and terrible in aspect, / Clad from head to foot in wampum . . . My goodness, why did I remember that?”

Jamie laughed. “What exactly is wampum? I was never quite sure what the word meant.”

“Shell beads,” said Isabel. “They were used as money, as well as being worn. You might describe Wall Street brokers as clad in wampum. I suspect they probably are.”

But now it was his turn. Leaning back, looking up at the ceiling, he said, “Glyndebourne.”

Isabel’s reply was immediate. It was a rule of Free Association that if you did not reply within ten seconds you lost your turn and the other player had another go. It was a further rule—invented by Jamie—that if you hesitated twice in a row you had to get up and make tea.

“Wagner,” she replied.

He looked at her. “Glyndebourne doesn’t make me think of Wagner,” he said. “It makes me think of Britten.”

She shook her head. “That’s not the point of this game, Jamie. You say the first thing that comes into your head, not into somebody else’s. And another rule is that you can’t argue with the other player’s association. If I say ‘Wagner,’ it’s because I thought of Wagner, and your saying ‘Britten’ counts as a hesita­tion. If you do that again, you have to make us both tea.”

He pretended to sulk. “Your go, then.”

“Tea,” she said.

“Mist,” came the reply.

She looked at him enquiringly. “Why mist?”

“Now you’re arguing.”

She defended herself. “No, I’m not. I’m just interested in why you said ‘mist.’ I’m not saying you can’t think of mist, I was just wondering why.”

“Because that’s what I see. I thought of a tea estate some­where up in the hills, in Assam, maybe. And I saw women in saris picking tea leaves.”

“Fair enough.” But she was back in Glyndebourne. “I thought of Wagner,” she said, “but not any old Wagner. I thought of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.”

“Ah.” He looked at her cautiously. He had almost taken a job at Glyndebourne—a long time ago, before they married. That road not taken could have been the end of their relation­ship, and they both skirted around the subject.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It was not an unhappy memory.”

And then, years later, they had eventually made it to Glyndebourne together, leaving Charlie in the care of the housekeeper, Grace, who had moved into the house for the weekend. Charlie loved Grace, and she loved him in return, although something in her background—something that Isabel could not fathom—made her adopt a brisk, and slightly distant, manner with chil­dren. “You have to be firm,” she said. “If you aren’t, then they’ll take advantage. They watch us, you know. They look for the slightest excuse to avoid bedtime.”

They had flown down to Gatwick and then gone to a pub in the Sussex Downs that had rooms at the back for opera-goers and enthusiasts of real ale. The two groups, sitting in the pub, could not have more easily identifiable had they sported large labels. The beer enthusiasts were bearded and loud; the opera-goers, elegantly dressed and feeling out of place, spoke more quietly than they would do later amongst their own in the opera house bar.

It was Isabel’s first visit to Glyndebourne. She had been invited before, once when she was living in Cambridge and again after she had returned to Edinburgh, but had been unable to make it on either occasion. The second of these invitations had come from her niece, Cat, who had been given two tickets by one of her customers, and had offered to take Isabel with her. When Isabel had been unable to go, Cat had gone with a friend, and had complained about the opera, Tippett’s The Knot Garden, which she had not enjoyed.

Even Cat, who was musically hard to please, would have luxuriated in The Meistersinger, a rich and spectacular produc­tion. Isabel sat transfixed and had to be prodded by Jamie to return to reality at the interval, when they went off to have din­ner in one of the opera house’s restaurants. And at the end, when they went out into the summer night, the sky still light enough for them to read the programme notes, Isabel did not want the evening to end. But Glyndebourne’s spell was slow to fade, and it was still upon them when they returned to the room they had booked in the pub, and closed the door and lay together on the lumpy double bed, still in their evening clothes, holding hands like two students newly in love, staring up at the ceiling with its uneven ancient beams of darkened oak. And she thought: How extraordinarily fortunate I am to be here, with him,when my life might have been so different if he had not come into it. She looked at him, and loosened his black bow-tie—a gesture that struck her, even as she performed it, as one of ownership. It was a curious feeling—one of . . . what? she wondered. Sexual anticipation? The feeling that you have when you realise that you will be sleeping that evening with the person you most want to sleep with in this world.

The game of Free Association might have continued had it not been for the sudden eruption of sound from a small monitor perched on the kitchen dresser.

“Magnus,” said Jamie.

“Bottles,” said Isabel. “Endless nappies. Sleepless nights.”

Jamie laughed. “I had stopped playing Free Association,” he said, pointing to the monitor.

Magnus was their second child, who had arrived three months earlier, and who had just signalled that he had woken and was in need of attention. His nap had overlapped with Charlie’s; Charlie, although still sleeping, would shortly wake up too and make his presence felt.

“Do you remember what it was like?” said Jamie, as he rose to his feet.

“What what was like?”

“When we only had Charlie.”

Isabel rolled her eyes. “Life was so absurdly simple then.”

“Not that I’d change anything,” said Jamie hurriedly. “I love them both to bits.”

She knew that he did. He loved his two boys to bits, and she loved them that way too. She also loved Jamie to bits, and he had assured her that he loved her to bits. And if an inventory of affection were being made, she thought of so many things she could add to it: their house in Edinburgh, with its shady gar­den and elusive resident, Brother Fox; their city, with its fragile, spiky beauty, its mists and its skies and its romantic history; and her country too, Scotland, with all its curious quirks and its capacity to break the heart again and again.

“I’ll go and get him up,” said Jamie. “I’ll change him if he needs it.”

“I’ll entertain Charlie when he wakes,” said Isabel.

“How do people who have four or five children cope?” asked Jamie.

“Or six?”

“Six!”

“The older ones look after their younger siblings,” said Isa­bel. “Look at old photographs. Fifty, sixty years ago. Look at pictures showing children in the street—the young ones are holding hands with their older brothers and sisters who are clearly baby-sitting. An eight-year-old would look after a one-year-old, and a six-year-old would look after a four-year-old.”

“Everybody looked after everybody else, I suppose.”

“They did,” agreed Isabel. “And did so without complaint.”

The monitor gave a further squawk. “Yet they didn’t even have monitors,” said Jamie.

###

Magnus’s arrival on the stage had been two weeks early, brought about, Jamie half seriously suggested, by Isabel having listened to a foot-tapping piece of music from the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. She had closed her eyes as she listened and then opened them suddenly, wide-eyed at the stab of pain.

Her breath had been taken away from her, and it was a few moments before she could speak. “She’s coming,” she said. They had been calling the baby “she” although they had asked not to be told what sex it was. Yet they were convinced; it would be a daughter this time. They knew they should not make any assumptions, but somehow they felt certain.

Jamie had looked puzzled. “But it’s two weeks . . .”

She did not let him finish. “I need to phone the midwife. I need to let them know.”

He realised that she was serious. “I’ll take you to the Infir­mary,” he said hurriedly. “Grace can look after Charlie. I’ll phone her right now.”

Isabel held up a hand. “Hold on,” she said. “They’ll tell me to wait. We’ll have hours.”

But she did not have much time. Things happened quickly, and she was in the labour ward within three hours, Magnus appearing twenty minutes later.

“A boy,” said the obstetrician, passing the glistening infant to a waiting nurse.

Jamie gasped. They had been so sure.

“A little boy,” muttered Isabel.

The nursing staff fussed around the baby before handing him to Isabel, loosely wrapped in an off-white cotton blanket. Swaddling clothes, thought Isabel. But this is loose, and is not proper swaddling.

Jamie cried, wiping at his tears with the back of his hand. They were tears that came with the cathartic welling up of more than one emotion: relief, sheer joy, love. These had all been his companions at the bedside, where he had sat through Isabel’s short labour; now they found release. A young nurse in train­ing, attending her first birth, was similarly afflicted, struggling to force back her own tears but finding the battle too much. A senior nurse, standing at her side, whispered something in her ear and touched her briefly on the shoulder.

“Are you sure he’s a boy?” asked Isabel.

The obstetrician peeled off his gloves. “I’ve never been wrong on that one,” he said.

The trainee nurse giggled.

“You need to get some sleep,” said the senior nurse. She looked at Jamie. “Father too.”

“We thought it was going to be a girl,” said Jamie.

“Well, there you are,” said the nurse. “You were going to get one or the other, weren’t you?”

Isabel held the baby, her cheek pressed lightly against his tiny forehead. She saw that the baby’s blanket had letters printed on it, and they suddenly registered. RIP: what a tactless thing to put on a swaddling blanket, but then she noticed that the letters actually said RIE. The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. That was considerably better. The eye could so easily deceive—as when, a few months ago, she had misread a newspaper headline Pope hopes as Pope elopes, and had, for a moment, been both shocked and surprised. Of course now that a pope had broken with long historical practice and retired, it was always possible that a radi­cal successor might feel that the time was ripe to elope.

Through the euphoria of the morphine they had given her right at the end, she felt a small niggle of disappointment. She had so wanted a girl, but she knew that she must not allow her­self to think about it. She had a healthy, breathing baby, and that was all that mattered. Perhaps it had been a mistake to remain ignorant of the baby’s sex; the sonographers had found out when they performed the ultrasound scans but at her request had delib­erately not shown her the screen. Perhaps she and Jamie should have asked, because that would have prevented their building up hopes. She had wanted a girl because there were things a mother could do with a girl. They would be friends, as mothers and daughters so often are, and would share their world with each other. This was a boy, and it would be like Charlie all over again; not that she regretted anything about him, but the demands of a boy were different.

Jamie held her hand. “Well done,” he whispered.

She squeezed his hand. “Twice as many things for you to do now that he’s a boy,” she said drowsily, not knowing exactly what she meant, or why she said it.

The seventeenth book in the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series One bright morning, Precious Ramotswe—head of Botswana’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency—receives a visitor: a woman from Australia. This woman asks Precious to take on a case: to find the nursemaid who raised her during her childhood in Botswana. The woman wants to thank her […]

Fee nodded. She had sat at the controls of the family submarine many times before this, but you know how it is when somebody asks you to take over a submarine—you always feel just a little bit nervous.

“Yes,” she said, trying her best to sound brave. “I’m … I’m sort of ready.”

Both Fee and her twin brother, Ben, had been taught from a very early age to help sail the submarine belonging to their parents, who were well-known marine scientists. Now, at twelve, almost thirteen, Fee had enough experience to bring the vessel up to the surface all by herself. But it was a very big responsibility, and it always brought to mind the things that could go wrong.

What if you made a mistake and dived instead of surfacing? What if you surfaced too quickly, so that the submarine popped up out of the sea like a cork out of water? What if you came up right underneath a large ship—a massive oil tanker, perhaps—broke the glass observation window, and then went straight down again? There were so many things that could go wrong in a submarine.

“Right,” said her father. “Take her up, Fee! You’ll do fine, of course, but I’ll be in the engine room if you need me.”

Once her father had left the control room she was quite alone. Her brother was doing his packing in his cabin, and her mother was busy in the galley—the submarine’s tiny kitchen—making sandwiches for the twins. Fee was by herself. Entirely.

Slowly she pulled the control column towards her. She could not see exactly where she was going—that’s never easy in a submarine—but she hoped there was nothing ahead of them, or above. The last thing a submarine wants to meet is a whale or a rock—or a whale and a rock, for that matter. You have to hope, too, that there isn’t another submarine coming up for air in exactly the same place as you.

A few minutes later, when they were just below the surface, Ben entered the control room.

“I’ve finished my packing,” he announced. “What about you?”

She glanced at her brother. She could see that he was excited, but she had far more important things to do than talk about packing.

“You mustn’t disturb me,” she said. “I’m just about to look through the periscope.”

He became quiet. It is always a special moment when you raise a submarine’s periscope, because that is when you find out where you are. You hope that you have come up in the right place, but you can never be absolutely sure. So if your hands shake a little as the periscope rises above the waves, and if you feel your heart thump a bit more loudly, then that is entirely normal.

Fee peered into the periscope as she pushed it upwards. There was water, just water, swirling round in every direction, and then, with no warning at all, she saw sunlight. The periscope was above the surface.

“What can you see?” Ben asked.

She blinked. The light was very intense and it would take a moment for her eyes to adjust.

You can turn a periscope round, so that it gives you a view in every direction. She would do that—just to check that nothing was coming—but first she would have a good look at the land.

“I can see an island in the distance,” she said. “I can see the shore.”

Ben caught his breath. “That’ll be Mull,” he said. Mull was the island they were heading for.

“It’s sunny,” said Fee. “It’s morning.”

“And Tobermory?” asked Ben. “Can you see Tobermory?”

“Which Tobermory?” asked Fee. “Tobermory the town or Tobermory the ship?”

She was right to ask: there were two Tobermorys. Tobermory, the town, was where the Tobermory, the ship, was based. They were going to the Tobermory the ship, but Tobermory, the place, was the harbour in which she (and ships are always called she) was normally anchored. The Tobermory was a sailing ship and a school at the same time. It was a boarding school on the sea, and while most schools stay in exactly the same place all the time, this one did not. This one sailed about, teaching everybody not only subjects like history and science – the things that normal schools teach—but also everything that you needed to know if you were going to be a sailor.

“I can’t see either of them,” said Fee. “I think we might be a little way away. But we can’t be too far.”

“Let me have a look,” said Ben, sounding rather impatient. Although they were twins, Fee had been born two minutes before her brother, and that made her older. It was only two minutes, but she often said that those two minutes were very important. “When you’ve been alive two minutes longer than somebody else,” she was fond of saying, “it shows. You’re just a bit more grown-up, you see.”

Ben did not look at it that way. He thought he was every bit as mature as his sister, and felt entitled to do everything she did. Right then he felt that he should have a turn on the periscope. “Let me look,” he repeated.

“No,” she said. “I’ve spotted a seagull. Oh, it’s come down lower. I think it’s going to land on top of the periscope!”

Fee laughed as she watched the seagull land. She had a good view of its yellow feet and of the underneath of its wings, that were white. As she watched, it flapped these wings, sending little droplets of water splashing against the outer lens of the periscope.

Slowly she moved the periscope round, so that she could look in other directions. The seagull did not like this, and he flapped his wings again in protest. Then she saw it.

‘There’s a boat coming straight towards us!” she cried out.

“Dive!” shouted Ben.

Because his sister was busy pulling down the periscope, he decided to take the controls himself. Pushing the column forwards, he opened the throttle as far as he could. The submarine responded immediately, giving a lurch downwards.

It was just in time. Seconds later they heard the thud of a boat’s engine pass directly over them.

“You should have looked round you,” accused Ben. “You should have looked instead of watching that seagull.” Although he was very fond of his sister, Ben secretly liked it when she did something to remind her she was not perfect.

Fee looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry,” she said. But then she said, rather crossly, “We can all make mistakes, you know.”

“Is everything all right?” their mother called out from the galley. “I felt a bit of a lurch there.”

“Everything’s fine,” shouted Ben in reply. He could have said, Fee didn’t spot a boat coming straight at us! But he did not. He could have added, And I had to take over the controls to get us out of trouble! But again he did not. Instead of this he simply said, ‘We’re going up again,’ and left it at that.

They surfaced once more, and this time they were both able to have a good look through the periscope. Fee had been right—they were not far from the island—but they were also closer than she had thought to both Tobermorys. There was the town, a small harbour with brightly painted houses curving round the rim of the bay. There were the people walking down the street, off to buy their newspaper and their morning bread and milk. And there in the harbour, riding proudly on its great anchor chain, was the most remarkable sailing ship they had ever seen. And across its bow was the name painted in shining blue paint—SCHOOL SHIP TOBERMORY.

“I think it’s safe to go all the way up now,” said Ben.

Fee guided the submarine right up to the surface. Now they could open the hatches and step out onto the deck to gaze at the ship that was to be their new home. As Fee stared at the ship through the submarine’s binoculars, she felt no qualms about joining the school. She had always tried not to be frightened by new experiences—nor by the dark, nor bad dreams, nor the thought of what could go wrong. That’ll soon be me, she thought, as she studied the distant figures on the ship’s deck. Although she could not make out what they were doing, they all seemed busy.

It was a wonderful sight. The great ship was painted white from bow to stern. Along the side were lines of neat portholes—the windows of a ship. And, as he stood next to his sister, gazing over at the Tobermory, Ben thought about how one of the portholes would be his. That would be his to look out of.

It was a very exciting thought, even if it made him feel just a little bit anxious. He had never been away from family for any length of time, and although people told him that going away to school was fun he was not sure whether it would be fun for him. What would it be like sharing everything with a lot of people you didn’t know? Could you be sure they wouldn’t laugh at you if you did something stupid? What if you lost your toothbrush, or your pyjamas, or one of your socks? What if somebody came and pushed you around or stole your money?

He had wanted to ask Fee some of these questions, but she had seemed so confident about what lay ahead that he had been unable to do so.

“What will it be like?” was all he had managed.

And she replied, “It’s going to be great.” And then, after a short pause, “You’re not scared, are you?”

He shook his head. “No, I’m not scared. Of course I’m not scared.” That is what people who are scared often say.

“Good,” said Fee. “Because I’m not going to be able to look after you all the time, you know.”

She did not say that unkindly, but it did not really help Ben very much. He wondered why she had thought she would have to look after him. Did she know something he did not? Had she heard things about the Tobermory that he had missed? But this was not the time for such thoughts. They had the ship to look at, and now, as the submarine sailed a bit closer, they were able to make out more details.

Above the ship, towering to what seemed like an impossible height, were the masts. The Tobermory was a sailing ship, and it had masts from which sails were suspended. These sails would fill with wind when a breeze blew up, and it is this that would drive the ship through the water. The ship also had an engine, of course, that it could use to go in and out of harbour or to help it on its way if there was no wind, but for most of the time it would rely on its sails.

“Look at all those ropes,” marvelled Fee, pointing to what looked like an elaborate web spun by some giant spider.

Ben shielded his eyes from the sun to get a better view.“That’s the rigging. Those ropes keep the masts in place.”

“And you climb up them?” It all seemed very high to Fee.

“Yes,” said Ben, taking his turn with the binoculars. “I’ve seen pictures of people doing that.”

Although they had spent a lot of time on their parents’ submarine—sometimes weeks and weeks at a stretch—Fee and Ben had never been on a sailing ship. That had not stopped them, though, from applying for a place at the school ship, encouraged by their parents who had decided that the Tobermory was just the right school for them. They had needed to think about boarding school for Ben and Fee, as they were often away on research expeditions. Up to then, the twins had stayed with an aunt, who looked after them while their parents were away, but this was going to be much more difficult, as the aunt had found a job that involved travel.

They had looked at various schools, but had not really liked what they saw. One was in a remote place on a mountainside and appeared dark and uncomfortable. The dormitory floors, they noticed, were all at an angle, with the result that the beds followed the slope of the mountainside. Sleeping in such a bed, thought Fee, would be most peculiar, as one’s toes would be much lower than one’s head, and all one’s blood would end up in one’s feet. And the blankets would gradually slip down to the end of the bed, which would mean that one’s top half would be too cold and one’s lower half too warm. “Not for you, I think,” said their mother—much to their relief.

Then there was the school that made everyone take a cold shower every morning. “It’s very character-building,” explained the principal.

“And very freezing,” said their mother—to suppressed giggles from Fee and Ben.

That same principal believed in lots of physical activity—all the time. So, as people moved from classroom to classroom they all ran, and meals were eaten standing up, so that people could do press-ups and other exercises between courses.

“It all helps to build people up,” said the principal proudly.

Then somebody suggested the Tobermory, and their parents had remembered once meeting the captain when he berthed his ship near their submarine. “He’s a very kind man,” remarked their mother, who wanted the best for her twins. “You’ll be happy there. I’ve heard good things about that ship.”

“Such as?” asked Ben. The idea of going away to school was still new to him.

“Just good things in general,” his mother replied. “Good things like making friends, which you’ve always wanted. And other things too …” She did not explain further, but just waved her hand and said, “You’ll find out.”

His mother was trying to reassure him, thought Ben, but did she really know what life would be like on the Tobermory?

“That’s right,” said Fee, who had overheard this conversation. “You’ll find out.”

But she, too, did not know, thought Ben.

Their father nosed the submarine in as close to the Tobermory as he thought safe.

“You’ll have to paddle the rest of the way in your rubber boat,” he explained. “We’ll wave goodbye from here.”

Ben and Fee began to blow up the inflatable boat that had been a present for their last birthday. It was not very big, but it would have just enough room to carry them both, together with their kitbags. They had been told not to bring a suitcase, but rather to bring soft luggage that could be folded and put into a locker. Now their two full kitbags, both labelled with their names, Ben and Fee MacTavish, stood at the ready on top of the submarine.

Once the boat was inflated, Ben pushed it gently from the submarine deck and into the water. Their mother, coming up from below, pressed two packets of sandwiches into their hands. “You might feel hungry before lunch,” she said. “I’ve heard the school food’s very good on the Tobermory, but just in case … ”

They thanked her, and she gave them each a goodbye kiss, as did their father.

“I know you’re going to be all right,” said their mother. “But I’ll be thinking of you. Will you think of me too? Every day?”

They both reassured her that they would.

“And you will write, won’t you?” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a long letter—even a postcard will do.”

“Of course we will,” said Fee.

“We’ll be back to collect you at the end of term,” he said.

“Work hard,” said their mother. “And remember to clean your teeth after every meal—every meal, please. And don’t forget to floss!”

“Yes, yes,” said Ben. He was eager to make the short crossing to their new home and he had decided to be brave. He could see that already there were other people on the deck of the sailing ship—people in smart blue uniforms swabbing the decks from buckets of sea water, polishing brass fittings, and generally looking very busy. These would be his new schoolmates—his new friends, he hoped. He was eager to meet them.

They climbed down into the boat and set off.

“Goodbye!” shouted their mother, waving a handkerchief.

“Goodbye!” they both shouted, as they started to paddle their way across the short stretch of water.

As they reached the side of great sailing ship, they both turned round to have one last look at their parents. But their mother and father had disappeared back into the submarine, and now the dark tube of the vessel was beginning to sink below the surface of the sea. They waved, although they knew that their parents would not be able to see them. They felt sad to be saying goodbye, and both of them—and that included Fee—now felt a bit anxious, but when you are starting at a new boarding school there is no time to think too much about the family you have left behind. This is especially true when your new school is towering above you and somebody is lowering a rope ladder for you to climb up. Not everybody starts school that way, but Ben and Fee did.

A rope came snaking down from above. Fee tied this to the rubber boat, stowed the paddles safely, and then she and Ben began to inch their way up the rope ladder.

“Ben,” whispered Fee as they began the climb. “Are you just a little bit … scared?”

Ben, who had started first, looked down at his sister beneath him. His decision to be brave was working. “Don’t be scared, Fee,” he said. “I’m not.”

But she was. And so would anybody be. The water seemed a long way down below now, and the Tobermory was rocking in the swell of the sea, making the rope ladder swing out from the side of the ship.

“I didn’t hear you,” said Fee. “What did you say?”

“I said I’m not scared,” repeated Ben.

And oddly enough, simply saying that he was not scared seemed to help.

They were nearly at the top of the ladder now, and he even managed to smile as he saw a pair of hands stretch out over the railings to help him clamber onto the deck. He looked up and saw that the hands belonged to a boy of about his own age, dressed in a smart blue uniform and grinning at him in a friendly way. The boy had a cheerful look to him—the sort of look that makes you think, I hope he’ll be my friend.

“I’m Badger Tomkins,” said the boy as he gripped Ben’s wrists and pulled him onto the deck. “Who are you?”

“I’m Ben,” said Ben.

“I was told to look out for you,” said Badger. “Welcome aboard the Tobermory!”

Badger now turned to help Fee. “You must be Fee,” he said. “I saw your name on the list of new students. Welcome, Fee!”

“What do we do now?” asked Ben.

“We haul up your rubber boat,” said Badger. “Then we let the air out of it and stow it away. Everything has to be stowed away neatly on the ship. It’s one of the rules.”

“Are there lots of rules?” asked Ben.

Badger laughed. “Plenty,” he said. “Maybe five or six hundred. But don’t worry. You probably only need to know ten. Those are called the big rules. All the others are called small rules, and we don’t pay much attention to them.”

Fee stared at Badger. “Do you like it here?” she asked.

Badger thought this a rather odd question. “But of course I like it,” he answered. “This is the most amazing, fantastic, exciting, superb, ace school in … in the entire world.”

“Are you joking?” asked Ben.

“Not at all,” said Badger. “You’ll see soon enough.” He paused. “Mind you, I won’t pretend that there aren’t some things that aren’t so great.”

“What are those?” asked Ben.

“You’ll see,” said Badger again. He looked at his watch. “We’d better get your boat up. Breakfast is in half an hour and if you’re late all the sausages will be taken.” He made a face “Some people always try to take more than their fair share.”

“Who are they?” asked Fee.

“You’ll see,” said Badger once again. “But let’s not stand about talking. Let’s get the boat up and then I can take you to the Captain before breakfast. We always have to take new people to the Captain when they arrive.”

“Is he the principal?” asked Ben.

“He is,” said Badger. “But you never call him that. He’s called the Captain because he’s the captain of the ship. His full name is Captain Macbeth. He’s also a teacher, of course, but his main job is running the ship.”

They began to haul up their rubber boat. Once it was up on deck, they took out the plug, deflated it, and stowed it away in a nearby locker. The locker was full of other rubber boats, all folded up just as theirs was. ‘This is where we keep our personal boats,” explained Badger. “Mine is that red one over there. It has a bit of a leak, I’m afraid, but I don’t use it often now. We have a class in the care and maintenance of rubber boats. They teach you how to stick a plaster over any holes.”

Badger looked at his watch again. “Right,” he said. “Ready for the Captain? Yes? Well, in that case follow me!”

Mma Ramotswe picked up the nurse’s uniform from her friend Sister Gogwe. It was a bit tight, especially round the arms, as Sister Gogwe, although generously proportioned, was slightly more slender than Mma Ramotswe. But once she was in it, and had pinned the nurse’s watch to her front, she was a perfect picture of a staff sister at the Princess Marina Hospital. It was a good disguise, she thought, and she made a mental note to use it at some time in the future.

As she drove to Happy Bapetsi’s house in her tiny white van, she reflected on how the African tradition of support for relatives could cripple people. She knew of one man, a sergeant of police, who was supporting an uncle, two aunts, and a second cousin. If you believed in the old Setswana morality, you couldn’t turn a relative away, and there was a lot to be said for that. But it did mean that charlatans and parasites had a very much easier time of it than they did elsewhere. They were the people who ruined the system, she thought. They’re the ones who are giving the old ways a bad name.

As she neared the house, she increased her speed. This was an errand of mercy, after all, and if the Daddy were sitting in his chair outside the front door he would have to see her arrive in a cloud of dust. The Daddy was there, of course, enjoying the morning sun, and he sat up straight in his chair as he saw the tiny white van sweep up to the gate. Mma Ramotswe turned off the engine and ran out of the car up to the house.

Mma Ramotswe panted, as if trying to get her breath back. “I’m sorry to say that there has been an accident. Happy was run over and is very sick at the hospital. Even now they are performing a big operation on her.”

The Daddy let out a wail. “Aiee! My daughter! My little baby Happy!”

A good actor, thought Mma Ramotswe, unless … No, she preferred to trust Happy Bapetsi’s instinct. A girl should know her own Daddy even if she had not seen him since she was a baby.

“Yes,” she went on. “It is very sad. She is very sick, very sick. And they need lots of blood to make up for all the blood she’s lost.”

The Daddy frowned. “They must give her that blood. Lots of blood. I can pay.”

“It’s not the money,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Blood is free. We don’t have the right sort. We will have to get some from her family, and you are the only one she has. We must ask you for some blood.”

The Daddy sat down heavily.

“I am an old man,” he said.

Mma Ramotswe sensed that it would work. Yes, this man was an impostor.

“That is why we are asking you,” she said. “Because she needs so much blood, they will have to take about half your blood. And that is very dangerous for you. In fact, you might die.”

The Daddy’s mouth fell open.

“Die?”

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But then you are her father and we know that you would do this thing for your daughter. Now could you come quickly, or it will be too late. Doctor Moghile is waiting.”

The Daddy opened his mouth, and then closed it.

“Come on,” said Mma Ramotswe, reaching down and taking his wrist. “I’ll help you to the van.”

The Daddy rose to his feet, and then tried to sit down again. Mma Ramotswe gave him a tug.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to.”

“You must,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Now come on.”

The Daddy shook his head. “No,” he said faintly. “I won’t. You see, I’m not really her Daddy. There has been a mistake.”

They went downstairs. A small crowd of people had gathered round the door into the stalls and there was a buzz of conversation. As Isabel and Jennifer drew near, a woman turned to them and said: “Somebody fell from the gods. He’s in there.”

Isabel nodded. “We saw it happen,” she said. “We were up there.”

“You saw it?” said the woman. “You actually saw it?”

“We saw him coming down,’ said Jennifer. “We were in the grand circle. He came down past us.”

“How dreadful,” said the woman. “To see it … ”

“Yes.”

The woman looked at Isabel with that sudden human intimacy that the witnessing of tragedy permitted.

“I don’t know if we should be standing here,” Isabel muttered, half to Jennifer, half to the other woman. “We’ll just get in the way.”

The other woman drew back. “One wants to do something,” she said lamely.

“I do hope that he’s all right,” said Jennifer. “Falling all that way. He hit the edge of the circle, you know. It might have broken the fall a bit.”

No, thought Isabel, it would have made it worse perhaps; there would be two sets of injuries, the blow from the edge of the circle and injuries on the ground. She looked behind her; there was activity at the front door and then, against the wall, the flashing blue light of the ambulance outside.

“We must let them get through,” said Jennifer, moving away from the knot of people at the door. “The ambulance men will need to get in.”

They stood back as two men in loose green fatigues hurried past, carrying a folded stretcher. They were not long in coming out—less than a minute, it seemed—and then they went past, the young man laid out on the stretcher, his arms folded over his chest. Isabel turned away, anxious not to intrude, but she saw his face before she averted her gaze. She saw the halo of tousled dark hair and the fine features, undamaged. To be so beautiful, she thought, and now the end. She closed her eyes. She felt raw inside, empty. This poor young man, loved by somebody somewhere, whose world would end this evening, she thought, when the cruel news was broached. All that love invested in a future that would not materialise, ended in a second, in a fall from the gods.

He telephoned shortly before seven. Mma Ramotswe seemed pleased to hear from him and asked him, as was polite in the Setswana language, whether he had slept well. “I slept very well,” said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. “I dreamed all the night about that clever and beautiful woman who has agreed to marry me.”

He paused. If she was going to announce a change of mind, then this was the time that she might be expected to do it.

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “I never remember what I dream,” she said. “But if I did, then I am sure that I would remember dreaming about that first-class mechanic who is going to be my husband one day.”

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni smiled with relief. She had not thought better of it, and they were still engaged.

“Today we must go to the President Hotel for lunch,” he said. “We shall have to celebrate this important matter.”

Mma Ramotswe agreed. She would be ready at twelve o’clock and afterwards, if it was convenient, perhaps he would allow her to visit his house to see what it was like. There would be two houses now, and they would have to choose one. Her house on Zebra Drive had many good qualities, but it was rather close to the centre of town and there was a case for being farther away. His house, near the old airfield, had a larger yard and was undoubtedly quieter, but was not far from the prison and was there not an overgrown graveyard nearby? That was a major factor; if she were alone in the house at night for any reason, it would not do to be too close to a graveyard. Not that Mma Ramotswe was superstitious; her theology was conventional and had little room for unquiet spirits and the like, and yet, and yet …

In Mma Ramotswe’s view there was God, Modimo, who lived in the sky, more or less directly above Africa. God was extremely understanding, particularly of people like herself, but to break his rules, as so many people did with complete disregard, was to invite retribution. When they died, good people, such as Mma Ramotswe’s father, Obed Ramotswe, were undoubtedly welcomed by God. The fate of the others was unclear, but they were sent to some terrible place—perhaps a bit like Nigeria, she thought—and when they acknowledged their wrongdoing they would be forgiven.

God had been kind to her, thought Mma Ramotswe. He had given her a happy childhood, even if her mother had been taken from her when she was a baby. She had been looked after by her father and her kind cousin and they had taught her what it was to give love—love which she had in turn given, over those few precious days, to her tiny baby. When the child’s battle for life had ended, she had briefly wondered why God had done this to her, but in time she had understood. Now his kindness to her was manifest again, this time in the appearance of Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, a good, kind man. God had sent her a husband.

Mma Makutsi, who had finished her rearranging of the filing cabinet, had made them both a cup of bush tea and was settling down to the half-hour break that she usually took at eleven in the morning. She had started to read a magazine—an old copy of the National Geographic—which her cousin, a teacher, had lent her.

‘The future? Yes, that is always interesting. But not as interesting as the past, I think. There is a very good article in this magazine, Mma Ramotswe,’ she said. ‘I will lend it to you after I have finished reading it. It is all about our ancestors up in East Africa. There is a Dr Leakey there. He is a very famous doctor of bones.’

“Doctor of bones?” Mma Ramotswe was puzzled. Mma Makutsi expressed herself very well—both in English and Setswana—but occasionally she used rather unusual expressions. What was a doctor of bones? It sounded rather like a witchdoctor, but surely one could not describe Dr Leakey as a witchdoctor?

“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “He knows all about very old bones. He digs them up and tells us about our past. Here, look at this one.”

She held up a picture, printed across two pages. Mma Ramotswe squinted to make it out. Her eyes were not what they once were, she had noticed, and she feared that sooner or later she would end up like Mma Makutsi, with her extraordinary, large glasses.

“Is that Dr Leakey?”

Mma Makutsi nodded. “Yes, Mma,” she said, “that is him. He is holding a skull which belonged to a very early person. This person lived a long time ago and is very late.”

Mma Ramotswe found herself being drawn in. “And this very late person,” she said. “Who was he?”

“The magazine says that he was a person when there were very few people about,” explained Mma Makutsi. “We all lived in East Africa then.”

“Everybody?”

“Yes. Everybody. My people. Your people. All people. We all come from the same small group of ancestors. Dr Leakey has proved that.”

Mma Ramotswe was thoughtful. “So we are all brothers and sisters, in a sense?”

“We are,” said Mma Makutsi. “We are all the same people. Eskimos, Russians, Nigerians. They are the same as us. Same blood. Same DNA.”

“DNA?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “What is that?”

“It is something which God used to make people,” explained Mma Makutsi. “We are all made up of DNA and water.”

Mma Ramotswe considered the implications of these revelations for a moment. She had no views on Eskimos and Russians, but Nigerians were a different matter. But Mma Makutsi was right, she reflected: if universal brotherhood—and sisterhood—meant anything, it would have to embrace the Nigerians as well.

“If people knew this,” she said, “if they knew that we were all from the same family, they be kinder to one another, do you think?”

Mma Makutsi put down the magazine. “I’m sure they would,” she said. “If they knew that, then they would find it very difficult to do unkind things to others. They might even want to help them a bit more.”

“Yes,” Cat went on. “I suppose that if I were prepared to offer enough I would be able to get somebody suitable to stand in for me. But I can’t. I have to run it as a business, and I can’t make a loss.”

Isabel nodded. Cat owned a delicatessen just a few streets away, in Bruntsfield, and although it was successful, she knew that the line between profitability and failure was a narrow one. As it was, she had one full-time employee to pay, Eddie, a young man who seemed to be on the verge of tears much of the time, haunted, thought Isabel, by something which Cat could not, or would not, speak about. Eddie could be left in control for short periods, but not for a week it seemed.

“He panics,” said Cat. “It gets too much for him and he panics.”

Cat explained to Isabel that she had been invited to a wedding in Italy and wanted to go with a party of friends. They would attend the wedding in Messina and then move north to a house which they had rented for a week in Umbria. The time of year was ideal; the weather would be perfect.

“I have to go,” said Cat. “I just have to.”

Isabel smiled. Cat would never ask outright for a favour, but her intention was transparent. “I suppose … ” she began. “I suppose I could do it again. I rather enjoyed it last time. And if you remember, I made more than you usually do. The takings went up.”

This amused Cat. “You probably overcharged,” she said. And then a pause, before she continued: “I didn’t raise the issue to get you to … I wouldn’t want to force you.”

“Of course not,” said Isabel.

“But it would make all the difference,” Cat went on quickly. “You know how everything works. And Eddie likes you.”

Isabel was surprised. Did Eddie have a view on her? He hardly ever spoke to her, and certainly never smiled. But the thought that he liked her made her warm towards him. Perhaps he might confide in her, as he had confided in Cat, and she would be able to help him in some way. Or she could put him in touch with somebody: there were people who could help in such circumstances; she could pay for it if necessary.

They discussed the details. Cat would be leaving in ten days’ time. If Isabel came for a hand-over day before then, she could be shown the current stock and the order book. Consignments of wine and salamis were expected while Cat was away and these would have to be attended to. And then there was the whole issue of making sure that the surfaces were cleaned—a fussy procedure subject to an entire litany of regulations. Eddie knew all about that, but you had to watch him; he was funny about olives and often put them in containers marked down for coleslaw.

“It will be far more difficult than editing the Review of Applied Ethics,” said Cat, smiling. “Far more difficult.”

Matthew had read somewhere—in one of those hoary lists with which newspapers and magazines fill their columns on quiet days—that moving house was one of the most stressful of life’s experiences—even if not quite as disturbing as being the victim of an armed robbery or being elected president, nemine contradicente, of an unstable South American republic. Matthew faced no such threats, of course, but he nevertheless found the prospect of leaving India Street for the sylvan surroundings of Nine Mile Burn extremely worrying. And it made no difference that Nine Mile Burn was, as the name suggested, only nine miles from the centre of Edinburgh.

“What really worries me,” he confessed to Elspeth, “is the whole business of selling India Street. What if nobody wants to buy this flat? What then?”

He looked at her with unconcealed anxiety: he could imagine what it was like not to be able to sell one’s house. He had recently been at a party at which somebody had whispered pityingly of another guest: “He can’t sell his flat, you know.” He had looked across the room at the poor unfortunate of whom the remark was made and had seen a hodden-doon, depressed figure, visibly bent under the burden of unshiftable equity. That, he decided, was how people who couldn’t sell their house looked—shadowy figures, wraiths, as dejected and without hope as the damned in Dante’s Inferno, haunted by the absence of offers for an unmoveable property. He had shuddered at the thought and reflected on his good fortune at not being in that position himself. Yet here he was deliberately courting it …

Elspeth’s attitude was more sanguine. She had been unruffled by their previous moves—from India Street to Moray Place, and then back again to India Street. The prospect of another flit—a Scots word that implies an attempt to evade the clutches of creditors or suggests, misleadingly, that moving is an airy, inconsequential thing—did not seem to trouble her, and she had no concerns about the sale of the flat. “But of course somebody will want to buy it,” she reassured him. “Why wouldn’t they? It’s one of the nicest flats in the street. It’s got plenty of room and bags of light. Who wouldn’t want to live in the middle of the Edinburgh New Town?”

Matthew frowned. “The New Town isn’t for everybody,” he said. “Not everybody finds the Georgian aesthetic pleasing.” He paused as he tried to think of a single person he knew of whom this was true. “There are plenty of people these days who are suburban rather than urban. People who like to have … ” He paused for thought. He knew nobody like this, but they had to exist. “Who like to have garages. Homo suburbiensis. Morningside man, who is a bit like Essex man but just a touch … ”

“Superior?”

“You said it; I didn’t.”

Elspeth smiled. “You shouldn’t worry so much, Matt, darlingest. And so what if we don’t sell it? We can afford the other place anyway.”

Matthew winced. “If I dip into capital,” he said.

Elspeth shrugged. “But isn’t money for spending? And surely there’s enough there to be dipped into.”

Matthew knew that she was right; at the last valuation, his portfolio of shares in the astute care of the Adam Bank had shot up and he could have bought the new house several times over if necessary. But Matthew had been imbued by his father with exactly that sense of caution that had created the fund in the first place, and the idea of selling shares in any but the direst of emergencies was anathema to him.

In general, Elspeth did not look too closely at Matthew’s financial affairs. She had never been much interested in money, and very rarely spent any on anything but family essentials and the occasional outfit or pair of shoes. She was nonetheless aware of their good fortune and of the fact that thanks to the generosity of Matthew’s businessman father they were spared the financial anxieties that affected most people. Her capacity for moral imagination, though, was such that she could understand the distorting effect that poverty had on any life, and she had never been, nor ever would become, indifferent to the lot of those—perhaps a majority of the population of Scotland—who were left with relatively little disposable income after the payment of monthly bills. This attitude was shared by Matthew, with the result that they were tactful about their situation—and generous too, when generosity was required.

The farmhouse near Nine Mile Burn had not been cheap. Although it was far enough from Edinburgh to avoid the high prices of the capital, it was close enough to be more expensive than houses in West Linton, a village that lay only a few miles further down the road. Their house, which they had agreed to buy from no less a person than the Duke of Johannesburg, who lived at Single Malt House not far away, had been valued at seven hundred thousand pounds. For that they got six bedrooms in the main house—along with a study, a gun room (Matthew did not have a gun, of course), and a drawing room with a good view of both the Lammermuir and Moorfoot Hills to the south and east; a tractor shed, a byre, and six acres of ground.

The Duke had been pleased that Matthew was the purchaser; they had met on several occasions before, although the Duke seemed to have only the vaguest idea of who Matthew was. Matthew’s quiet demeanour, however, had been enough to endear him to the Duke.

“I must say,” the Duke had remarked to a friend, “it’s a great relief to have found somebody who’s not in the slightest bit shouty. You know what I mean? Those shouty people one meets these days—all very full of themselves and brash. We used to have very few of them in Scotland, you know; now they’re on the rise, it seems.” The friend knew exactly what the Duke meant. “Nouveau riche,” he said. “They’re flashy—they throw their money around.”

The Duke nodded. “Whereas I’m nouveau pauvre. I’ve got barely a sou these days, you know—not that I ever had very much.”

“And you a duke,” said the friend. “Fancy that!”

“Well, a sort of duke,” conceded the Duke. “I’m not in any of the stud books, you know: Debrett’s and so on. Or I’m in one of them—just—but I gather it’s not a very reliable one. It was rather expensive to get in; you had to buy sixty copies, as I recall, and I think quite a number of people in it are a bit on the ropey side. In fact, all of them are, I believe.”

“People take you at your own evaluation, I’ve always thought,” said the friend. “Behave like a duke and they’ll swallow it.”

“True,” said the Duke. “But frankly, that’s a bit difficult for me, old man. I’m not quite sure what the form is when it comes to being a pukka duke.”

“Take a look at some of the people who are what they claim to be,” advised the friend. “Watch the way they stand; the way they walk. They’re very sure-footed, I’m told. And they look down at the ground a lot.”

“That’s because they own it,” said the Duke. “Doesn’t apply to me—or not very much. I’ve got fifty-eight acres in Midlothian and forty-one up in Lochaber, but most of it is pretty scrubby. Lots of broom and rhododenrons.”

The friend looked thoughtful. “No, you’re not quite the real thing, I suppose. And then there’s always the risk that the Lord Lyon will catch up with you.”

The mention of the Lord Lyon made the Duke blanch. This was the King of Arms, the official who supervised all matters of heraldry and succession in Scotland. He had extensive legal powers and could prosecute people for the unauthorised use of coats of arms and the like.

“Do you think Lyon would ever bother about me?” asked the Duke nervously.

His friend looked out of the window. “You never know,” he said. “But I shouldn’t like to be in your shoes if he did.”

It was not the sort of thing a friend should say—or at least not the sort of thing that a reassuring friend should say.